Collage on Cassettes
Collage on Cassettes (1988 - on going)
mixed media, cassette tapes
It was a chance occurrence that led me to start making field recordings with portable cassette recorders. In 1988 I was living in Brixton, a district of South London. I bought a gray Sony from a black man who sold dusty appliances and electronics on the street. I was about to leave for Morocco, and I had the idea of making recordings during the trip. Previously I had been taking photographs, but as it happened my Nikon FA camera had broken, I lacked the funds to buy a new one, and a cassette recorder was the best substitute I could come up with. I could not have imagined I would continue using them for decades.
I began recording fragments of everyday life as a sonic “diary.” When I had filled up one cassette, I let it sit for a while, then when the mood struck I randomly layered sounds on top of it. Through this process my various experiences were collaged together with no particular context, becoming a mass of sound in which lurked fragments of memory, drenched in deep and luminous hues. It lacked sufficient structure to be called music, and was too raw to be called art. Anyway, I was too obsessed with making the tapes to care about such definitions.
On some cassettes, the same sound went on ceaselessly until the tape ran out: the crashing of waves, the crackling of a bonfire, the murmuring of dreams, it didn’t matter as long as the sound drew me in and kept me listening with tape recorder in hand. These cassettes were a document of deep listening, and they steadily grew in number.
At some point I began jotting notes on the cassettes, pasting on magazine clippings and other found materials, and creating visual collages as I had been doing with sound. Over time –– ten years, then twenty –– the layers accumulated, and a sea of images disconnected from reality emerged, seemingly unbidden.
I felt I was using everyday materials to fabricate an alternative reality. I kept on recording and collaging, not so much to gain something as to lose it. In fact, I believe I relied on the power of forgetting more than remembering. So today, when I listen to or look at tapes from the past I am not burdened with the weight of factual history, of how things actually occurred. It is fascinating to see how memories are transformed over time –– faded, blurred, dramatized, distorted. Being trapped in the past is a bitter fate, and nostalgia is a saccharine refuge. I release these documentations, fictitious as they may be, like arrows flying toward the future. (AO, 2020)
Exhibitions
2021 A Letter from Souls of The Dead, Portland Institute from Contemporary Art (PICA), Portland, OR, USA
2020 Listening: Resonant Worlds, Arts Maebashi, Maebashi, Japan
2011 Cassette Diary, B.P.S. 22, Charleroi, Belgium
Publication
2015 Diary, Unframed, USA
Download print ephemera HERE
